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Obama is a distant cousin of Palin and Limbaugh -- many generations removed

By David Jackson, USA TODAY
Updated 2010-10-12 8:12 PM

President Obama doesn't have much in common with Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh -- though he is actually 10th cousins to both through common ancestors who lived back in the days when the British ran America.

Ancestry.com is reporting that "Obama and Palin are 10th cousins through common ancestor John Smith," while the president and the conservative commentator Limbaugh are "actually 10th cousins once removed via common ancestor Richmond Terrell."

"This election season is an ideal time to look into the family trees of our candidates and their critics to learn more about the ties that make them all part of this great country," said Anastasia Tyler, a genealogist at Ancestry.com.

The website also reports that:

-- Palin, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and conservative author Ann Coulter are also cousins through Englishman John Lathrop, who was exiled to the United States for becoming a minister of an illegal independent church.

-- Obama, Palin and former President George W. Bush are also related. Obama and Bush, who both reached the highest office in the land, are 11th cousins through common ancestor Samuel Hinckley. Palin and Bush, who are also 11th cousins, are also related through Hinckley. Apparently leadership runs in the family, since Hinckley's son, Thomas, went on to become governor of Plymouth County, Massachusetts.

These kinds on connections are more common than you might think. According to the genealogy website:In 2009, Ancestry.com discovered that Obama and financial investor Warren Buffett are more than just allies. The two men are 7th cousins three times removed.

Ancestry.com also revealed that Obama and actor Brad Pitt are 9th cousins.

In 2008, Ancestry.com announced that then-Governor Sarah Palin is a distant cousin to both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Princess Diana.

As Cecil at The Straight Dope has concluded, everybody on Earth is likely 50th cousins to everyone else.

And way, way closer than that if you restrict it to something like "Americans with any European ancestry."

While genealogy is cool and interesting, there's a lot of weird special-snowflakeism among its practitioners. Oh, you're very distantly related to Queen Elizabeth? Well so is Snooki, and so is that homeless guy, and so am I. How wonderful for us all.

While genealogy is cool and interesting, there's a lot of weird special-snowflakeism among its practitioners. Oh, you're very distantly related to Queen Elizabeth? Well so is Snooki, and so is that homeless guy, and so am I. How wonderful for us all.

True.

Worst, it can be used as a way to prove one's "racial purity" over somebody else's. Maybe not always explicitly, but still.

There are a lot of amateur genealogists here in Quebec who go at great length to trace back their ancestry to original French settlers. I have the feeling that for many of them (not all, I understand), this is a way to prove their worthiness and their legitimacy as "true French Canadians". I find this lame, you have no idea.

Pseudo ex/maybe to be again/tbd gf is big into genealogy -- she did mine last year back several centuries.... not a family lineage thing or some show of superiority - she's likewise echoed the eyerolls about "extend it to 9th cousins and we're almost all related" -- she just likes the history... and I have to say, it was really cool seeing my great-great- grandparents pinpointed to a town in Poland on one branch and another in the Ukraine. Where she was able to find the detail, it was also sort of cool find out some distant great-uncle was an apothecary or another was a farmer, etc.

As one of those amateur genealogists, I've enjoyed the research of finding my ancestors. The best (verifiable) discovery I've made is my g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-great grandparents were married in this church in 1557. And the church still stands.

Then again, that's my mother's side of the family. On the other, I have my father and nothing past him.

My Dad's Dad traced his & my Grandma's families back to the mid-1800s, but that's about it. My Mom has no idea, beyond her own grandparents.
The thing is, I come from hundred years of illiterate rural people. I say we're all from Nairobi, and I say the hell with it.

Amazing GF's family, by contrast, is obsessed with its own history (came West with the Mormons, or some damn thing). Like, one of them is a historian, and has written books (plural) about them & everything. Fortunately, Amazing GF really hates the navel-gazing, although I think she'd prefer we all be from Kenya, just because it'd piss off a certain demographic.

One reason I'll never say a bad word about genealogists is that they are single-handedly keeping Britain's extensive record office system open (though many are cutting back on opening hours). Without all the people looking up their ancestry I'm not sure they'd bother to keep all those documents as accessible for people like me researching important things, like whether the Earl of Strafford was wearing his hat at a particular court proceeding in 1636.

Genealogy can be wonderful. My grandmother found out that one branch of my ancestors lived on the same godforsaken farm from the mid 15th century until the 1920's. So now my lethargy has pedigree and all. I have no comments about possible inbreeding.

I've got the worst Bond actor and that shares a last name with me and that's as much as I know about my genealogy. Admittedly, I don't look super hard, my parents are from a 100 person town in Arkansas and a county in West Virginia so unpopulated they didn't even break it down into towns. I fear the lack of branches might disturb me.

Edit: I guess I have vague senses. I know I'm of Scotch decent on one side and English on the other. I know my father's side diverged from a central point and we were a lesser nobility, I know that after we got sent to Australia and America by way of prisoner shipping we became horse thieves on both continents. In a way, I prefer those kind of stories to "your vaguely related to this person." The narrative is what's interesting. And let's be real, the lawyer descendant of horse thieves is cooler than Joe Blow who went to law school to avoid teaching high school civics.

That is not correct 32, but it occurs to me in retrospect that the above post would give someone all the info they need to identify me provided they had proper taste in Bond films, so maybe I shouldn't elaborate on my taste in Bond films.

my parents are from a 100 person town in Arkansas and a county in West Virginia so unpopulated they didn't even break it down into towns. I fear the lack of branches might disturb me.

Edit: I guess I have vague senses. I know I'm of Scotch decent on one side and English on the other. I know my father's side diverged from a central point and we were a lesser nobility, I know that after we got sent to Australia and America by way of prisoner shipping we became horse thieves on both continents. In a

As Cecil at The Straight Dope has concluded, everybody on Earth is likely 50th cousins to everyone else.

I remember reading some article after The Da VInci Code - I believe it was on Slate (I just went to the site to try and find it after not visiting for several years and my god, what have they done over there - I did not find the article) - where they were saying that if you went back to the 30th generation or so we were pretty much all related. The conclusion was that if Jesus was an actual historical figure we were all related to him, no secret societies or buried codes required.